Professor Leonard's insightful exegesis of Christian history vividly demonstrates the power of personal story to communicate the word of God. He returns to the roots of the Baptist story to find in the lives of John Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and Roger Williams epic examples of the potent presence of the gospel in earthen vessels. The story of early Baptists is recognized as an experiment in "radical faith" that often led to "improvising grace." Readers and hearers of these sermons, as well as of those sermons that issue from other preacher's who follow Leonard in pursuing the disclosure of the divine Word in human history through the ages, will find themselves challenged to take up a risky faith that trusts the coping power of grace.

Bill J. Leonard was, at the time of publication, the William Walker Brookes Professor of American Christianity at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He holds degrees from Texas Wesleyan College (B.A.), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and Boston University (Ph.D.). A noted scholar and popular preacher, he is the author of The Nature of the Church (1986) and God's Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention (1990), and the editor of Becoming Christian: Dimensions of Spiritual Formation (1990).

Titles of related interest
From Our Christian Heritage	Proclaiming the Baptist Vision: The Church	Baptist Ways	Baptists in America